Comments on: Right Now Might Be Our Last Chance to Go to Mars in Our Lifetimes

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By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 14:49:42 +0000

Aha – Magsails! – Magnetic sail spacecraft suggested by Robert Zubrin and Dana Andrews :

“A magsails key component – still hypothetical – is a long loop of superconducting cable … when an electrical current is passed through the cable it flows continously creating a sustained magnetic field. This field deflects the solar wind …the [solar wind] particles impart much of their momentum to the loop which tows the ship along. … a magsail would help protect spacefarers fromdangerous radiation by its sheild of magnetism.”

Source : Page 79,‘Starbound’ Time-Life Time-Life Editors 1991.

That’s what I was referring to above. Wonder if that magsail idea has advanced at all since then & if we could really build those?

By: Messier Tidy Upper

Messier Tidy Upper — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 13:56:08 +0000

Can’t we develop some sort of radiation shielding? I can recall seeing at least one design using magnetic fields in a non-fiction book on possible spacefaring somewhere.

Plus I second what (#1.) Dean wrote too.

By: pk

pk — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 00:05:21 +0000

Sometimes the most elegant solutions come by challenging the basic assumptions of the question…”So why not simply send a high-tech bipedal robot (aka android) to Mars?”, i.e, why (if any) is there a priority on putting a human on Mars?

By: Tr(ansh)uman

Tr(ansh)uman — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 22:48:15 +0000

I really don’t see the difference between sending a high-tech robot to sending humans to Mars when 99.9999 percent of us (humans) will not get there even with the rosiest projection of advances in propulsion technology? So why not simply send a high-tech bipedal robot (aka android) to Mars? If the estimates of some futurists are on the ball, we’ll have human-level artificial intelligence by 2035 that can do what a typical human can do.

By: Torbjörn Larsson, OM

Torbjörn Larsson, OM — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 15:39:05 +0000

“Problems what need to be licked” – Problems that need to be licked. Such as my spelling when drowsy. ‘Scuses!

By: Torbjörn Larsson, OM

Torbjörn Larsson, OM — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 15:36:09 +0000

It’s not the leadership, it’s the budget, commercials can’t go to Mars either. The reason we won’t go to Mars anytime soon is that 1) we don’t know how to do it, 2) it is too expensive anyway, 3) where is the exploratory ROI? There are a lot of interesting places between here and there. (Counting the Moon but discounting it as a record breaking “first”; been there, done _that_.)

Sure, exploration goes for fancy places bypassing some more mundane ones at first. But it also does what is achievable. Problems what need to be licked before we go is besides the radiation hazard: neural system loss to radiation, bone loss to low stress environment, immune system loss for unknown reasons, and/or faster transits alleviating the earlier listed items, landing large crafts on Mars… possible more.

Especially the last, since it is mandated and _no one_ knows how to land crafts larger than 1 metric ton on Mars (AFAIU). We lack essential technique! Until that is resolved Mars is, and remains, a pipe dream.

[But yes, a larger budget would likely be gobbled up by organizational waste anyway.]

By: Realist

Realist — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 07:12:06 +0000

We’re never leaving this planet under NASA:s leadership. No how, no way. The future of space exploration (if there is any) lies entirely with private space companies. Deal with it.

By: Dean

Dean — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 02:46:01 +0000

“The sky is falling ! The sky is falling!”

I do apologize for being so blunt, crude. The reasons we go is BECAUSE we don’t know, want to find out. If the captain of a sailing vessel were to apply the core of this, that sailing vessel would never leave the dock.

But they have. Magellan, Drake, Da Gama, Hudson, Franklin, Challenger, and a myriad more, have all left safe harbor to venture into the unknown. And yes, they died, they will die, we will die. But you will die in your bed, safe and warm. And others will not.

Sailors are wont to say, “Waste not a minute.” In sailing, if the tide is right (solar storm minimums) you set sail and go. Delays of a minute in sailing can, and do, mean delays of days in arrival. Go now.